SAN ANGELO, Texas (Concho Valley Homepage) — No. 12 Rams baseball opened the Lone Star Conference tournament as the 2nd seed and hosted Texas A&M Kingsville for a best of three and would drop a tough game two after leading series 1-0.
The Rams left Saturday’s series opener feeling good after stealing 13 bases, collecting only two strikeouts between their batters and forcing a mercy rule to open their playoff journey.
The fellas went into game two Sunday looking for the series win and that would prove to be a tough task after a scoreless first five innings for both teams in an early pitching duel. ASU collected three straight hits in the bottom of the 6th inning to open the scoring, an RBI single, RBI triple and RBI double but a costly mistake made it 3-0 with no runners on, two outs, instead of one on, one out and still threatening to score.
ASU gave back the three runs in the top of the 7th and the Javs would break this game open in the 9th. Rams decided to intentionally walk the Javelinas to make it runners on the corners with two outs, hoping to give them the chance of a force out opportunity at second or first. But Cash Benavidaz got the pinch hit call for the Javelinas in the 9th and sent a no doubter over the left field wall to put Kingsville up 6-3.
ASU notched one run in the home half of the final frame with a solo home run from Brett Smajstrla but the comeback fell short in the 6-4 loss.
Rams and Javelinas meet Monday at 1pm for the decisive series finale, the winner moves on to Tyler to continue their playoff journey for the LSC title.
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